Don't Worry
by Val-Creative
Summary: "Let's run away," Richie proclaims, hanging his fingers through the open fence-loops, wiggling his eyebrows. "Get married in Tuscon and change our names. I'm still calling you Eds, Eds—" /Canon AU. Teenagers. Reddie. Oneshot.


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Some nights get like this.

Eddie feels a pure sense of intoxication in the hot and humid summery air, throwing his head back and howling. Like he's been sprung free of prison. Like it has been a wishful hope come true.

His mother yells _get back here! EDDIE-bear! you're gonna CATCH something! get back here RIGHT NOW!_ from the lawn and Eddie pumps faster on his bicycle, letting the _tck! tck! tck!_ of a J. R. Richard baseball card between metal bicycle spokes drown her out, cruising himself through an open stretch of blacktop.

Mike and Stanley hang out with Beverly on the fire-escape to her dad's apartment, smoking and laughing. They're illuminated in the sallow, green overhead light.

Eddie waves cheerfully as he passes by, going upright as his bike whirs and listening to them call out inaudibly. Stanley's left arm hangs over Mike's lap carelessly, holding onto his knee, his fingers gripping loosely onto the denim of Mike's jeans.

Bill got dragged off to Montana for a family reunion until probably next week. Ben ends up working the night shifts at the library's circulation desk, while Mike works the afternoon shelving. Which is fair.

To be honest, Eddie doesn't wanna be in Derry, Maine any longer than he's gotta be.

He was born here, but Eddie ain't dying here too. That's for _goddamn_ sure.

Below the hilltop by the local high school, Eddie leaves his bike, forgetting the kickstand. It clatters onto the soft, dewy grass. He climbs up the hill and wanders for the empty, sun-warmed parking lot.

A fluttering, creamy-white moth lands on Eddie's hand. "Whoa," he mutters, waiting in both eagerness and a twinge of anxiety as it remains sitting still on the length of his bare index finger. As soon as Richie's bike horn goes off, alerting Eddie of his presence, the moth startles alert, taking flight and vanishing.

Richie lets his bike tumble over, also forgetting the kickstand. His dark, sweet-smelling hair windswept.

There's bright blue makeup smudged over his eyelids and brows, along with cartoon frog stickers and hearts from Beverly's dresser-stand. It's exactly the kind of Crayola blue that Richie has pretended to use as lipstick when they were in fourth grade.

The same grade where the vice-principal caught Richie smoking outside the gymnasium, and who told Richie that each cigarette cut down a day of his life. Being the wiseass he was, Richie proceeded to shove another two cigarettes into his mouth, grinning and lighting up. The vice-principal then gave Richie a bruise-dark welt the size of _Montana_ on the side of his face.

Eddie pushes down the memory, gazing over him with a frown and then over his shoulder. The hilltop looks like a mountain outlined by the purple-pink sunset in the distance. Little, budding blue flowers poke through the chain-link fence separating them in the fringes of the school's parking lot.

"Let's run away," Richie proclaims, hanging his fingers through the open loops of the fence and wiggling his Crayola-blue eyebrows. "Get married in Tuscon and change our names. I'm still calling you Eds, Eds—"

"—you're a moron," Eddie interrupts, rolling his eyes and jerking his chin. "Get over here so we don't miss the previews." But to no avail, because Richie just stares at him with a big ole smirk, almost moonstuck by him, and presses his nose hard enough against the steel chain-link to smush his nose.

"Give us a kiss first, _dawwurlin_ '."

Richie's overly fake, tittering drawl simultaneously irritates Eddie and stirs up heat in his chest. "Seriously…?" he mutters, unsure if it's meant for Richie or the whole situation. "..."

"..."

"I'm not kissing you."

"Chickenshit," Richie says, slow and smug, and Eddie wants to deck him badly. With his mouth— _no_ , his fist. Both. It's both. Fuck, okay, kissing Richie has been a constant daydream of Eddie's for years.

Heat blooms up Eddie's chest, flushing on his ears and neck. "You're the only shit-eater here, Trashmouth," he mumbles, looking away, and wow, _wow_ , Richie's laugh surrounds him like pinpricks, tingling across the surface of Eddie's skin. A hell of a lot gentler and realer than a moth's trembling, creamy-colored wings.

Most nights are like this.

Especially when Richie makes him feel _alive_.

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* * *

 _It (2017) isn't mine. I'm so late on everything. Didn't get to do everything I wanted on this, but I did really like it! I hope everybody else does to! This is for the It Secret Santa 2018 and I was given darling-richie to make a gift for! So anyone who reads this, thanks and also any comments/thoughts are graciously thanked too!  
_


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